The oldest trick in the book: Deny and lie — and when the news is bad, change the subject. That's the Nincompoop in Chief's m.o. So sayeth the experts, above all Paul Krugman. "I had a bad feeling about Bush, from an economic standpoint, as far back as the 2000 presidential campaign," he says. "I just felt — My God, he's lying through his teeth!"

No wonder today's lead editorial in The New York Times, following up yesterday's report in The Washington Post, begins this way: "President Bush reacted decisively to this month's shockingly bad employment report — by quickly changing the topic to terror."

No wonder the nincompoop's corporate minions say the latest internal Pentagon audit of Halliburton, first reported yesterday by The Wall Street Journal, is "being used for political purposes" even though:

+ The audit found that the company has "failed to adequately account" for roughly half of "the $4.2 billion it has received so far" for contracts to provide "logistical support to troops in Iraq and Kuwait."

+ The audit found that the accounting system of Kellogg Brown & Root, the Halliburton subsidiary working in Iraq, "was inadequate in nearly every way in dealing with the costs of providing food, shelter and other support for the troops" and "gave the military inadequate cost estimates, incomplete and inadequate reviews of those estimates, poor employee training and 'a lack of current, accurate and complete cost and pricing data,' according to the Pentagon."

No wonder "surveys suggest that Bush's popularity has plummeted among 18 to 29 year-olds in the past four months," according to today's Post, and that the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll shows that John Kerry leads the nincompoop "2-1 among registered voters younger than 30."

No wonder the nincompoop claims not to read newspapers. Otherwise he'd read about another unbelievable screw-up, reported in today's Los Angeles Times: "Stretched thin by troop deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan and security needs at home, the Army has resorted to hiring private security guards to help protect dozens of American military bases."